


Borrowed Time

by Hopetohell



Series: End of the World [2]
Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Gore, Graphic Torture, Other, Past Torture, Psychological Trauma, Smut, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopetohell/pseuds/Hopetohell
Summary: He won, but at what cost?Directly follows “Rising, Falling.”
Relationships: August Walker/Original Character(s)
Series: End of the World [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856770





	1. When You Wake

**Prelude to the new world order**

You’re not sure why you expected the end of the world to be fire and brimstone. When the world ended, you could barely even tell anything had changed. In the end, you hardly had to do anything. Might, in fact, have had better results if you _hadn’t_ done anything. Certainly you’d hurt less. 

You put on your coat. They help you with the buttons, even now. You put on your gloves against the cold, leather creaking. You sigh, step through the door. There is so much work to do. 

How much changes in a year. _How little_.

There are no days without pain. No hours, minutes, seconds when some part of yourself doesn’t remind you of everything you’ve been through. At least your guts have healed, as much as they’re able. The ostomy bag is off, the hole where it sat now just another scar for your collection. One small mercy in a sea of indignities. 

Your hands hurt the worst of all. And isn’t that just tragic, love, that you can stroke your lover to completion but can’t button your own shirt. The buttons are too small, the edges too hard against the ruined pads of your fingers. 

_Oh but how the whorls and scars make them_ howl, _dear, how their cries rattle your bones._

When you return from your errand you shrug out of your coat and set to stripping your cock because you _can._ Because with your hand pulling dry and rough you can blank out the smell of cordite and blood, can quiet the fluorescent hum at the back of your mind. Hammond watches, appraising, from the sofa. Feet up, head lolling against the backrest. Almost indolent, except for the sharpness of their gaze. 

_Be careful, love. That one can tear and bite with the best of them._

Fuck. 

Your hand skips on your cock, stutters, drops to your side where it hangs limply. When you turn away, your gaze goes first. 

They rise, press delicately calloused fingers to your mouth. “Suck.” So you do. This, at least, you are still capable of. When they grip at your hair, you bow your head for their blessing. _Remember._ “Forget about it.” _Remember._ “Let me take care of you.” _Crawl._ When you spill over their fingers it takes you unawares, rips a choking sob from deep in your ribs. They pet you through it, soothing, and you hate how that makes you feel, torn open and fragile. 

—-  
 **Second verse (same as the first)**

You missed the birth of this wide new world, didn’t you, dear, cocooned in your bed with your body in ruins. You died, didn’t you, dear, again and again as they carried you through the falling snow. And again on the table, and again, until you used up all your lives but one. 

You woke in your hospital bed with the old world falling down around you. You woke, somehow, not alone. You woke unbound, sunlight on your skin, blood still crusted under your nails. You lived, somehow, though you didn’t deserve it. 

But. 

What kind of life is this?

Was it worth it, to wake each day with a scream shoved back behind your teeth? To knuckle salt and sleep from your eye, to rise from your bed and settle your elbows on the sill while you watch the sun come up? 

You jerk and spill your coffee when they step too soft, surprised by a hand stroking down your spine. You blink and sigh when they step louder. You shake your head, you’re fine. _Are you_

You rub silicone gel into scars that are starting to soften and fade, crisscrossed by new ones still tight and shiny. You remember getting every mark. And the older they are, the more they ache. 

You stop watching the news after a week of being home. People dropping like flies all around the world. Within days, three billion people just gone. You were successful beyond your wildest dreams. You—

Home. You circle around the thought, prod at it, like prodding your tongue into a cavity. Taste the salty strangeness of it. _Put it back, love. Put it back or so help me. This is not for you._

—-  
 **They write books about this sort of thing**

Hammond does things for you that you wouldn’t have thought of. They bring you tinted glasses when your eye itches and burns from so many hours working at your laptop. They shave your face now and again, when you sit and bare your throat, half hoping their hand will slip. They brew coffee and rub cream into the scars you can’t reach. 

And what, dear, have you done for them? Brought them out of an early retirement, so you could drag them into your schemes, get them captured, so they could watch you bleeding out on the floor. “Hush,” they say _they’d be better off_ from where they’re working you open _better off,_ making you writhe on their fingers with your eye shut tight. You think, vaguely, that you ought to be touching your cock or touching them or _something_ but your hands are pressed hard against your face, making red and black patterns twist and writhe behind your eyelid. 

“I’ve got you, it’s alright _it’ll never be alright_. One more, there we go.” You gasp, try to bite it back but it’s free now, a weak and wounded sound. Their fingers twist and press and you wonder vaguely if you’re dying _(please)_. 

“Let go _let me go_.” They wrench your orgasm from you like they’re grasping your guts in their hands. Your fingers are digging hard into your own face and you barely realize. “That’s it, that’s good. _Is it good are you good_ are you—“

—-  
 **Burnt down**  
The problem is, you’d never seriously expected to survive. Everything you had went into the planning, the execution, the smoothing of the way for this new world. And now that it’s here, what do you do? 

Well. At the moment you’re staring down at Symon where he lies writhing on the table. Symon, who _deliberately_ omitted Benjamin Dunn’s survival from his mission report. Symon, who is in a world of trouble. You both know how you earned that name of yours. Hammer, indeed. 

_Let’s start slowly, shall we dearest?_ He has ten fingers and ten toes. Nine fingers. Eight. And every time you take another, you make him count it. When you get to six, you grow tired of the begging so you take his tongue. Because this isn’t about intel. This isn’t even about sending a message. This is personal. 

The fluorescent lights blink and buzz—no. Wait. That’s not right. He’s under the harsh glow of a halogen lamp, his blood flowing in runnels and rivulets down the grooves of the autopsy table. So convenient, the way it’s all funneled away. So convenient, so clean, and you just have to press your hand down into the blood, soaking your cuff. Pass your hand over his face and paint him red. Lick your fingers and take that part of him into yourself, own him, make him yours. 

You can’t undo your past, but you can unmake his future. _I am with you, love, I’ll show you how._

You see it, don’t you dear, the moment when hope dies. When he realizes the best he can hope for is unconsciousness followed swiftly by death. And _fuck,_ he nearly makes it under before you turn him upside down, force the blood to his head. _Sloppy, love. Get it together._

When you carve him open, it’s so deliciously intimate. So much so that you are nearly sick. You choke back bile and show your sharp teeth. Show him the wet red ropes of his insides, drape them over the ruins of his hands. Take him to pieces from the toes up, make a pile of his parts as he diminishes. 

When there’s nothing left of Symon but meat, you wipe your hands, let out a deep breath, push through the double doors. Hammond looks up from their book, eyes the blood splashed all up and down your front. “I think the plumbing still works here, let’s get a shower before we go.” They’re smiling as they speak, just a little, soothing. Careful. When you answer their smile, it’s with blood and tongue and too many teeth.


	2. Sharp Teeth

**Meet cute. Ish.**

You watch Hammond sleeping, their delicate hands curled around the corner of their pillow. How long has it been? Years, at least, back when you had more skin than scars. Back when you could still shoot straight. Back when you were, if not a _good_ man, then at least in the CIA’s good graces. 

You’d been given the task of bringing in one of the Apostles’ interrogators, someone whom you’d never met but knew by reputation. Hammond, there in Vienna on what had circumspectly been described as a business trip. The Apostles maintained a sort of workshop there, on the upper floors of an old apartment building. You gave your passcode, suffered their awed faces. Went to find this Hammond.

_Fuck_ , but they did beautiful work. You watched them trade cuts for secrets, clothes immaculate beneath their canvas apron. Voice gently cajoling with each bite of the knife, making their subject bloom beneath their hands. The subtle shift of the tendons in their forearms fascinated you, stirred something in your depths that had long lain dormant. And when they turned to you after, when they offered you coffee and conversation, you said yes. How could you do otherwise?

The coffee, of course, was beside the point. 

You kissed them wet and open, coffee still cooling on your tongue, in the elevator up to their room. You licked into them and stole every gasp from behind their teeth, breathed their air like a man drowning. And you, dearest, you were inside them even before you crossed the threshold of their room, your hand fumbling sticky on the handle of the door. 

They yielded to you, love, let you take and take and _take_. And they gave you such pleasure, oh my darling. Pressed their fingers into your scars, gently at first and then hard, getting at the nerves hidden under numb skin, fingernails leaving bloody crescents in their wake. They bit at the long pink lines on your belly like they wanted to eviscerate you, like they wanted to climb inside and never leave. And love, oh love, how you forgot yourself and it was wonderful. 

How you roared when you came inside them, love, how you howled until your throat ached and trembled. How you licked them clean and fed them the taste of yourself. How you bit at them to take a taste of their blood in trade. 

In the morning, you watched their reflection in the glass as you shaved. Watched them moving sure and smooth around the room, your marks shifting on their skin. You sat companionably back-to-back on the bed while you lied in your mission report. You agreed, of course, that this was far too risky to let happen again. (Of course it happens again, and again).

—-  
 **Hunger**

The world has become inconvenient. Disrupted supply chains mean food is often difficult to come by, especially for someone like you. You’re not exactly inconspicuous, are you, with your scars and your scowl and your single piercing eye. With your massive frame grown so very thin, with the strange broken shards of you that make others turn away with unease. So you scrounge and steal. You take produce boxes off porches, you snatch food from the mouths of babes. You get by. 

You work at rebuilding yourself, of course, you stretch and strain until you burn with sweat, until you feel flayed to the bone. Your body has always been your best weapon, hasn't it. And you try so hard to keep your edge. Love, you remake yourself once again, into something lean and hard and desperately hungry. 

Hammond goes out to replenish their coffee supplies. Returns with the coffee, but also with a torn jacket and a bruise under one eye. They laugh and say “Don’t worry, _love_ , I’m fine _they touched what’s yours_ , they got a lesson in leaving people alone _they hurt what’s yours_.” You don’t even see red, you see _white._ You find the would-be muggers, tear them to pieces without finesse or care. You smash their teeth so not even dental records can identify them. 

When you return, when you come back to yourself, Hammond is there to rub antiseptic into your bloodied knuckles, to tape your broken fingers together. They _hmm_ disapprovingly but you see the small smile, see the dark heat in their eyes. They press the pads of your fingers to their lips and draw you down into bed. 

In the morning you stretch and sigh, wincing when your hands tangle in the sheets. You cradle your coffee cup between your palms, watching the sun come up. The position of your hands grazes against something in your muscle memory, something that has you almost smiling. You smell breakfast; a rich, heady smell that makes you salivate. You haven’t had meat in such a long time. Hammond comes in with a plate, cuts of meat still steaming. They press you back down into the bed, loose and indolent as you sprawl on the sheets. They pick up a chunk of meat between fingers and thumb, press it to your lips. You chew. Swallow. Open your mouth for more. And they oblige. 

—-  
 **Brokenhand**

What’s a little more pain, after everything? You wear it well and almost comfortably, little aches and twinges that sing you to sleep at night and drag you toward waking in the early hours of the day. So when you pull Hammond down into the bed after breakfast, it’s a little less what the fuck and a little more why the fuck not. 

Your broken fingers are scraped raw, and you feel the sharp edges of your scabs as you bite at the tape binding your fingers together, tasting bitter adhesive. It takes them a moment to realize what your intent is, and when they do they tilt their hips up, just a little, just enough to press against you, their breath quickening. 

“You’re certain.” It isn’t a question. 

When you have them bare you reach under their ass and haul them up, legs splayed over your elbows so you can lick at them, saliva everywhere, your rhythm stuttering every time your hands shift because _love_ , your nerves are aflame and you can’t help the gasps, the cries that slip free. And when you raise your head, when you lower their hips to the bed again, Hammond’s face is—well. How do you parse an expression like that? Arousal, and concern, and something deep and dark and hungry. 

You don’t even try to brace against the pain. When you breach them with the first finger, when the sharp grinding burn of your cracked bones pulls a gasp from you, when you see that strange hunger in their eyes, you understand. And love, you _like_ it. 

With two fingers inside them you’re sweating, your thumb circling them doggedly. They squeeze hard, deliberate, tearing a keening cry from high in your throat. Love, watch their eyes. Watch the pattern of their breaths. Match them with your own, quick and shallow. Love, when they clench around you to grind your bones, watch their eyes. 

Love, you are bound to them by blood and bone and falling snow. 

When they shiver and shake apart around your hand, they take you with them. Their cries of _yes_ and _god_ and _always_ tie their silk threads around your insides, pull your seed loose from you like pulling teeth, leave you gasping and hollow. 

And love, you _like_ it.

—-  
 **A little bit more (red meat sharp teeth)**

_Let me in, let me in, let me in._ Listen, love, to how the blood sings on your skin. Listen, love. Cloudlight streams through the bars and you are _gasping_ for it, gasping for their bloody hand on your cock. For the way they shudder and smile around you, hand and mouth working in perfect opposition. 

Fuck, this is not what you expected but goddamn will you take it. The smell of bloody grim death heady in your nose, sweet and metallic, already spiked with decay. Yesterday these were people, then they were muggers, then they were _meat_. Their teeth crunch underfoot like pearls, like autumn leaves, as you scrabble for purchase. Your back bowed over their piled bodies, your broken bandaged hands soaking up blood and lymph and god knows what. 

And Hammond, like always, looks up and smiles. _Love, so many_ teeth. _How sharp_ they are for you. Love. They see your work and they are so so so proud of you. How good you are. How fierce, how wild. They see your light, love, see it spark in your chest. _Love, let me put out the flame. Rest. Rest._

We are all born bloody. Some of us will die that way, and you? You have no other choice. You live and die by the frenzy of their hand, by mouth by tongue by teeth by

_Hammond_. 

Love, how they ride you now, wild and wanting, their knees on someone’s neck, on someone’s wrist but slipping and sliding as the parts roll away, their hands on your chest, handprints marking you, claiming you _mine, mine mine._ Your broken hands press dumb and useless at their hips, palms driving deep against their bones, fingers aching and burning in their bloody bandages but it’s so so so sweet _let me live in you_ and you won’t last like this but it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is

_Fuck_ , when you spill inside them it leaves you lightheaded and screaming, howls echoing off the walls as they slide off you and swallow you down, taking you beyond too much as they grind onto their own hand, as your twitching body makes angels in the fluids pooled on the floor. 

Love, it’s bloody and foul and violently

perfect.


	3. Chapter 3

**The way out (maybe it’s like this)**

It’s not as though you should’ve expected anything different, love. You knew what Hammond was like. You knew the way handling the knife brought out the best in them. Hell, you bared your throat to them more than once. And now that you’re under their hands, now that you have a chance to see their work up close, you don’t _like_ it? Dearest, how _ungrateful_ you are. 

How you shiver and shake, love, as those nine fine fingers skate down your bare chest, dip into the hollows of your ribs. They see you staring at the scar, at the fresh stitches binding shut the place where their fourth finger used to be. _Yes, darling, for you. My first real gift to you. Are you ready for another?_

Their work is just like you remember. Full of care, every bite of the knife soothed by their soft words. Gentle, even, the way they open the skin over your ribs, tuck their fingers into the wound to press against your bones. Love, you are howling but your voice is gone. Love, listen to their words. Let them lower you down. 

“That’s it,” as they read your future in the whorls of your fingertips. “You’re so good, so good for me,” whispered in your ear as they slice the ends of your fingers to the bone. “Just a little more, we’re nearly there,” as they look you in the eyes. As they look you in the eyes, as you see the scalpel approaching. 

They split your eyelid first, love, something unreadable in their gaze. Maybe you could parse it, if you could see better through the blood filming your eyes. _Such beautiful blue eyes. So fierce. But love, your light is dimming_. “Love. Eyes on me.” Softer now. Gentle. “Keep your eyes on me.” 

You rattle your chains, oh my dearest, and oh how it disappoints them. You see it, can’t _help_ but see it now. 

Someone else is here. _Hurry up, we haven’t got all day._ Hammond flicks a hand at them, doesn’t bother to reply. But they lean in close, whispering. “Nearly there, love. _Eyes on me_.” And so you watch their eyes, as the scalpel passes into your peripheral vision. You watch their eyes as the blade splits your iris and pupil. You watch their eyes as blood and vitreous humor roll down your cheek. Your one remaining eye fills with tears, and still you watch their eyes. 

They squeeze your hand with one of theirs, stabbing a shard of wire into the meat of your palm. They quirk a brow. _Haven’t you figured it out yet, darling? Wait for it. Find your moment._

You watch their eyes. Watch until they turn away, until they leave the room, until you’re alone again. Love, how your breath shudders in the empty air. Are you crying? Love, pull yourself together. 

—-  
 **Song for the missing**

Hammond, predictably, says they give no fucks one way or the other. But Hammond also has a list. Just in case. 

You watched them at work once, didn’t you, love, flirting with them over a man’s entrails, watching the way the blood climbed up their wrists. They worked barehanded of course, so they could feel every minuscule vibration of pain traveling up the scalpel to their hand. And for every howl and gasp and whispered _please, anything you want_ , they spoke the most soothing words in return. “Now, darling, just a little more, we’re nearly there. You’re doing _so well_.”

That seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it, love? 

You don’t ask. They go out sometimes but they come back, they always come back, so you swallow the words and watch them come and go. They come back, sometimes, blood under their nails and crusted in the gnarled scar where their fourth finger used to be. They come back, sometimes, with spots of color high on their cheeks. They go out more and more often. One day, they take you with them. 

Love, if you didn’t know better, you’d think this felt like home. Isn’t that right? Down here in this dank basement, flickering lights throwing strange shadows over table and chains, over the strange miserable creature hunched in the corner. Jones, who you vaguely remember wanting to defenestrate. It would’ve been better for him if you had. 

“Number seven. Transport.” Ah, the driver, then. Probably told himself he was just doing his job, if he even knew who was in the truck. If he even knew (or cared) who he ferried toward hell. Doesn’t matter now. You help Hammond lift him, secure him to the table. And then you take your position to watch the master at work. 

_You’d let them, wouldn’t you, dearest_? You’d let them carve the flesh from your bones, make you into something new, if only they asked (if only they would ask). 

“Do you know why you’re here?” they ask, slicing off his fingertips. 

“Do you know who I am?” Gently, as they carve patterns over his belly. 

“Do you know who _he_ is?” As they drive skewers between his ribs into his lungs. 

And he says nothing, wouldn’t have the breath even if he were conscious. Hammond is disappointed, you can tell by the set of their shoulders. By the way they sigh, and shrug, and slit Jones’ throat. “Are you hungry, darling? I could do with some lunch.” And so you leave Jones to the rats and the roaches, and climb the stairs up to the street. 

Lunch turns out to be sandwiches, stolen from an unwary commuter’s backpack. One hunger is assuaged as you eat, another is only fueled by the heat radiating from Hammond’s gaze every time you catch them looking. Their plans make circles within circles, surrounding you, passing through you. They fill in all the gaps where you’re crumbling. They fall forever toward you in their orbit as you do toward them, bound to their light. 

—-  
 **A good old-fashioned beating**

“I don’t think, ah, I don’t think it’s working. Can you—no? Shit. What if—ah _Christ_ , it’s dark in here.”

“Love, the lights are on, what are you saying? Love? _August?_ ”

Strange hands tear away the blindfold and you are, at least, not blind (yet) but _fuck_ , you’re in trouble. It’s cold, you’re naked, and these hands, they scratch and bruise and catch at you. And Hammond’s there, clawing and spitting where they’re bound back to back with you in a parody of companionship. 

Something isn’t right, even considering the situation. 

It’s not like you’ve never been caught, never been captured, never been tortured for fuck’s sake. And amidst the chaos of power vacuums and widespread hunger in the wake of your victory, you have enemies. Some of them, apparently, still have the energy and the resources to chase you down. Hammond’s been out hunting, and you? 

_What’s the last thing you remember?_

Working, must have been. Trying to gauge who could still be counted on. Trying to weed out the Apostles who followed you from the ones who followed Lane, the latter group clearly displeased that of the two of you, Lane was rotting and _you_ were out raising hell. 

Seems like you catch it both coming and going. The CIA and the Apostles both hate your guts, don’t they, dear. Either would love to see you broken open, to see every scar sliced from your body to stripe fresh wounds into your skin. So who’s gotten to you first?

Apostles, apparently, and not even one of the big players. Some guy you vaguely remember looming large and menacing in corners. You mostly tune him out after he begins his tired monologue, trying to catch the rhythm of Hammond’s breathing. It’s off, somehow, shallow and quick. He notices your wandering mind and strikes Hammond hard, hard enough you can feel their head whip to the side, and you are _impotent_ here, love. You can hear them gasping and coughing, you can feel their warmth, barely brush their fingertips with yours where your arms rest wrist against elbow, but you can’t see them, can’t assess, can’t do anything but writhe in anger. 

“This is the part,” Hammond wheezes, “where you’re supposed to ask us questions. Jesus, who the fuck _trained_ you?”

And now it’s you getting beaten and that’s better, that’s good, because you’re pretty sure Hammond’s got a collapsed lung. You know the sound of it, the familiar wrongness, of the pressure in their chest building and building. If you could only find a way out. 

For now, you take the blows. Your nose breaks and you taste blood on your tongue, spit it at him. The next blow is hard enough it rocks your chair back into Hammond’s, hard enough you hear an ominous crack that isn’t just the sound of your ribs breaking. “Do it again,” Hammond grits out, and what? but the next blow has your chair breaking, sending you to the floor, arms flailing amidst rope and bits of broken chair. _That makes sense, aren’t they clever. They used you well, don’t disappoint them_. And you don’t, stabbing a piece of chairback into the guy’s carotid, arterial spray hitting the ceiling lights and bathing the room in a rosy boudoir glow. 

And there’s Hammond, love, pale and wheezing, pulling each breath from the depths of their chest, bruises spreading over their broken ribs. Love, find your clothes, find your knife. Stab Hammond in the fucking chest. 

And you miss the first time, don’t you, shaking hands trying to pull back long-ago muscle memory, your blade scraping bone. You have to listen to them gasping wet, blood running over your fingers as you try again. And this time you get it, their breath easing as the pressure in their chest diminishes. 

You give your shirt to Hammond because who knows where their clothes have gone, and some selfish part of you loves seeing them in your clothes, loves how they’re barely covered by your shirttails. Loves, even, the line of blood trailing down their belly and thigh. But love, you are tired and you ought to rest. Love, go _home._


	4. How it Ends

**The persistence of memory (and never mind the nightmares)**

_Darling, I miss you._  
The wind claws at you, crawls up the sleeves of your coat. It seems like it’s always winter now, cloudy and cold. Do you remember sunlight? Do you remember the breeze in your hair as you rode through the Paris streets, playing a game you thought you could never lose? Do you

_remember_

_Oh love, oh dearest. You are bound to me, to this_  
Remember the way it felt, the first time you saw your own intestines. The sharp, cold bite _blinking light_ of open air in your most secret of places. The cruelty of your captors as they tugged at you. _This is a gift._

_Why do you persist, love? You’re tired. Come home and I will lay you down._   
Do you miss it, love? The certainty of knowing that every day is pain, that every day will leave you a little bit less than you were before? Do you miss the light, the shadowless corners of the room where you lay?

_You do_  
You don’t.   
_Oh god you really do_

Hammond, curled on the floor, lung collapsed, eyes wide with pain. With the feeling of dread that says death is coming. 

Hammond, in pieces, empty eyes watching as they moulder on the floor. 

Hammond, their fingers twisted in your hair to get your mouth on them. To pull you into their center and never let you go. Their hands on you, in you, seeking out your secrets. 

_Love, you are afraid._

Benjamin Dunn’s foot on your neck.

_Love, you like it_

Warm sun in Paris. 

_Love, I’ll never_

“Let me go,” you cry, and shake yourself awake. Your hands ache with cold and you cannot remember how many times they’ve been broken, cut, torn apart, only that they ache when it’s cold and it is always cold. 

Hammond is there, like always, moving a little slowly, a little gingerly, pressing a mug of coffee into your hands. The heat soaks into your bones, eases the pain. “What do you think about taking a vacation, someplace warm? We could do with a change of scenery.”

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a wonderful idea. 

—-  
 **Death Valley in spring (wasn’t your idea but you’ll take the credit)**

You see the shape of a thing in its absence. Shadows pulled taut in the firelight, their hand on your neck. The air blood-warm, temperature not even registering. And when you lie in the sand it soaks the day’s heat into your bones and you feel nothing at all. 

You feel nothing, and it’s so _good._ No one around for a hundred miles except Hammond and the click and whirr of their hand-cranked coffee grinder. No one to hunt, no one hunting you (except maybe coyotes, passing by the edge of your camp). 

The first night, you don’t dream because you don’t sleep. You watch, and listen, and the air is so still it nearly hurts you. You watch the stars pass overhead and you don’t know the constellations so you make them up. Hammond grazes their teeth down your ear, sighs, wriggles a hollow in the sand beside you. The sun rises and there is no sound; the air is still and waiting. Still. 

Still. 

What is it like, you wonder, to feel like this always. 

When was the last time you felt no pain?

You grasp at the sand under your hands, driving grit under what’s left of your nails because _you don’t know_ , do you? 

This was all their idea. After the collapse there’s no one to watch the borders, no one to mind this great expanse of nothing. No one to save you if you should lose your way, but also no one here to hunt you. There is _no one here._ And in that absence you feel the weight of being hunted, love, of hunting, of the worry that next time you come home it’ll be to an empty house. 

“Love, where is your mind?” They settle beside you, a hand’s width away. They hold a mug out for you, and together you wait for the world to wake up. 

The second night you spread your blanket on the sand and open one another in turn, this place stealing the words from your lips so you pant and gasp to fill the silence. To remind yourself that you haven’t slipped away. They feel it too, they must, for how their sharp gaze softens when they look at you in the firelight. For how they nudge at your hip to roll you over, and give to you a benediction of lips and tongue and fine, clever hands. 

You dream, strangely, of the ocean. You dream of a path down to a rocky beach where salt spray tangles your hair and scours your lungs. You wonder if you’ll die there. Maybe that would be alright. When you wake, light is barely leaching into the night sky. You sit and watch the sun come up, until Hammond nudges you to point out silhouettes on the horizon. Time to go. 

—-  
 **Tuolomne**

Winter’s chill lingers here, rising from the deep earth well into spring. It cools the paintbrush, the lupine, keeps the trout sluggish in their streams. Lucky for you, because you are possibly the worst fisherman left on the planet. You sit and try to soak up the sun while you wait for fish to bite. You return empty handed, and cut wild onions into your tinned soup for supper. 

The pain is worse, now. Even when the sun is at its apex you feel a twisting deep in your belly, a bite at your bones. You see phantoms in the peripheral vision you should not possess. Hammond watches, bites their lip, turns away. Maybe they see your ghosts, maybe not. 

Every time is like the final time. Every time is slow and strangely tender in the open air. Every time you reach, and grasp, and your hands fall open. Every time you ache, and ache, and try to feel their face through the bright white agony of your fingertips. They lay you down and ride you slow, hair falling like a curtain so you cannot see their face. 

It seems like the days are getting shorter. Look, the sun’s going down already. Let’s camp here. _Love, I’ve been patient_.

“It’s not—love, it’s barely noon.” Are you alright are you alright _love I’ll never let you go_

It’ll be alright. You’ve survived worse than a few aches and pains. You scratch your beard on their neck to make them laugh. _Love, I have been generous._

Every day the ache burrows a little deeper. When you cough, your hand comes back bloody. For a while you try to hide it but it doesn’t matter. 

You feel the ancient pull of the sun, the need to follow it west to where it meets the sea. Hammond goes with you, carrying your pack now. You wake at night and they’re beside you, always beside you, prodding at the fire with a stick. You wake at night to the feel of your insides trying to crawl out through your throat. You wake at night to Hammond’s fingers carding through your hair. It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. 

You’ll be alright. 

—-  
 **To the sea**

You always thought you’d die bloody. You never thought it would end like this.

_Love, count ten. That’s it. Nearly there now._

You breathe in the sea air. _One, two._ Counting breaths. _Three, four._ Hammond’s arms around you, trying to press warmth into your bones. _Five_. Oh, how it aches. _Six._ Their whisper in your ear. Love, it’ll be alright. _Seven, eight._ Light shines somewhere beyond the breakers. 

_Love, if you let me go I’ll let you go._

_Nine._

_Te—_


End file.
